New Subscription gift with issue 7

Issue 7 is now safely off at the printers and I can show you one of the final drafts of the front cover (if anything changed I’ll swap it out for the final one later!)

Tracy made it on to the cover with her GORGEOUS moebius wrap made out of a Tula Pink Jelly Roll. We have lots more of Tracy’s clver designs coming up in the magazine in the next few issues, I for one and impatiently awaiting the arrival of her latest creation next week (no pressure Tracy!)

The smocked dress is by Heather Ross and we made our sample using her totally gorgeous double gauze princess and the pea fabric. We have a quilt coming up in issue 9 that also uses this fabric, it is just the most beautiful print design ever and Heather was such fun to work with. Her interview questions made me want to get on a plane and go straight to New York and be her new best friend. Although I’m not sure she would have appreciated that!

The big floor cushion is made with the remainder of the Dogwood scraps that we had after making the yoyo quilt in issue 4 and the birds that you can see in the bottom right hand corner were made by the talented Jessie Quinn. We also have some great refashioning pieces in there, an amazing man’s shirt, a set of laptop bags, a feature on sourcing vintage fabrics, the next installment of our mystery quilt project and a cute embroidered T shirt by Janet Clare. Seriously, this is one of my favourite issues ever.

And while I’m talking of my favourite things our new subscription gift for issue 7 is amazing. In the spirit of wanting to give you something so perfect that you just can’t say no to the magazine we worked with our good friends at Clothkits to develop an exclusive gift that has been printed especially for you. I can’t show you what it looks like because we haven’t even seen the final version ourselves yet but its Clothkits, how can it not be gorgeous?

Stocks are super limited and are for new subscriptions from issue 7 only. If you are still waiting for a subs gift from us you will get a Clothkits one. They can also be purchased from us for £9.99 plus postage and if you are an existting subscriber whose subscription is due to run out with issue 10 you can resubscribe early from issue 7 onwards in order to be able to claim your Clothkits gift (which will be sent to you with issue 11 of the magazine). The best way to do this is to phone the office on 01279 879038 and talk to either Kerrie, Mandy or Alex.

How exciting!

Holiday season

Anna will be back from Japan this week while I will be heading off to the South West with my family for a week so we’ll be like ships passing in the night, with piles of emails and submissions handed off from one of us to the other. If you try and contact me this week, I won’t be back online and answering emails until 21st April so bear with me.

Just to prove to you that the Sew Hip team are dedicated sewists though, I thought I’d leave you with a photo of my son in a shirt I made for him from Heather Ross’s amazing new book, Weekend Sewing.   We reviewed the book in issue 6 and really couldn’t find enough words to express how amazing the book was.  We have a gorgeous design from Heather in issue 7 as well as an interview and a preview of her new range of fabric which is just gorgeous.  I may even organise a giveaway for some pieces of the fabric when I’m back from holiday, I’ll see what we have leftover after the quilt in progress for issue 9 has been completed.

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So here is the boys shirt, doesn’t he look grown up?  I’ll confess to cheating slightly and cutting the pieces from one of my husbands old shirts so I didn’t actually make the button band and I only made the collar smaller rather than making it from scratch.  I did have to resize the pattern to fit my tall and skinny almost 5 year old as the pattern only goes up to age 3 but on the whole I was really pleased with it.  Its hard to find good boys patterns, something that we are looking to achieve with a GORGEOUS boys pattern in issue 8, designed by one of our fast becoming favourite contributors Tracy Cushing.

Hello?

Its been a while hasn’t it? Lots going on behind the scenes here at Sew Hip – lets do a brief recap and then we can get back into the business of proper blogging, yes?

- We have a new editor, the lovely Anna Hodgson from Eternal Maker. Anna is working for us as commissioning editor 2 days a week and is doing a brilliant job. You may have seen her introduction in Sew Hip issue 6 (also known as the one with the chicken!) and we have more patterns and input from her coming up in the next few issues.

- Sew Hip has gone digital! You can now subscribe to or buy single issues of the magazine and download them to your PC / Mac here. Its a fantastic way to try the magazine out or to keep reading us if you are concerned about your carbon footprint. International subscribers will see a huge difference in price by reading us this way.

- Sew Hip issue 7 is in production at the moment, we have a gorgeous Heather Ross dress pattern and interview for you as well as some sewing projects for the men in your life. I can’t wait to see the pages come back from the art department.